Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues, it is 7.51 on this Monday before Thanksgiving, and of course it is, ladies and gentlemen, start your credit cards on the day after Thanksgiving while we get to Black Friday. Pete from LC New York is shaking his head on that one. Good morning.
Pete: Good morning. I've been saying that for years. Yes, it's one of those things. Yeah, definitely is.
Paul Szmal: Now, of course, you're getting LC New York ready for Black Friday and for the holiday season, and I imagine you've been working on this stuff for a while.
Pete: We have. We usually start in October. We start formulating a plan and what we're going to do, and then we try to line up a local vendor to be outside serving food, and then we decide what we want to do for the holiday season. And that's in terms of what specials you want to have, the stuff that you want to try to sell?
Paul Szmal: Correct. Correct. And then how much we want to move it.
Pete: Right. And how much do we want to save the average consumer?
Paul Szmal: Yeah. How bad do we want to move it?
Pete: Right. And how much do we want to save the average consumer?
Paul Szmal: Yeah. How much of the year-end closeout factors into the holiday season?
Pete: Not for us because we actually get it quite a bit all year long. It's just regulating it and the flow of the product.
Paul Szmal: Right. So you've got the idea in place. You've got the plan in place. So what are some of the specials that you're going to have? Can you give us a little sneak preview?
Pete: I'll give you a little sneak preview. Okay. I'm going to give you one. All right. Because the Black Friday ad will drop on Wednesday for everybody listening. We are going to do 40% off the store just as a general rule. Normally we do 30. We're going to do 40. But that's just a small sneak peek. The rest of it, we'll have to wait until Wednesday when it drops. It's a long list. It's a really good list.
I'm going to drop one other item that we don't normally do and we're going to try it this year. We're also going to do 25 deals of Christmas. I haven't dropped this yet, but we're going to start that Black Friday weekend towards the end of the weekend and it's going to go right through Christmas. It'll be a different deal every day. There's a different tidbit. It'll be a low, low price. It'll be the deal you want to come in for and you're going to want to get this item on that day.
Paul Szmal: What was the inspiration behind trying that?
Pete: We want to try something new. If we have all these products, why can't we move them at a low, low price, save everybody money, and then try to get some of this great product into people's hands for Christmas.
Paul Szmal: In the midst of all of that, you are doing a special Pictures with Santa event. This is going to be on December the 6th.
Pete: Correct. We want to do something also for the community. Come bring your family. Get some pictures with Santa. I believe we're going to be either emailing or printing these pictures for Santa and Mrs. Claus. I think it's from 3 to 6 p.m. on Saturday the 6th. We'll have a couple boxes set up if you want to donate to local food pantries. We're also going to take non-perishable goods for local food pantries.
Paul Szmal: Is there any cost for the pictures?
Pete: None. Not a thing. Bring your family and not a thing. Absolutely free event.
Paul Szmal: Holiday Pictures with Santa and the Mrs. for free. That is a nice touch. Very nice touch.
Can we talk about this now?
Pete: We totally can talk about this. I believe that's going to drop also on Friday. Every year, the past couple of years, Pete from LC New York has worked with us as FLX Local Media, our group of radio stations, to come up with a holiday giveaway. It's big stuff. We are doing it again this year and certainly no exception. What's the goodie list for this year?
Pete: This year we're going to give a rug of choice. If anybody's ever been in the store, we always have rugs. They're somewhere in the range of $99 to $200. Your choice. Pick whatever rug you want. We also have a 75-inch Samsung OLED TV to go with the package. We have a really nice bookshelf cabinet. It's got nice glass doors that open up. You can either use it to store your fancy china or you can store your books. And then a TV mount to go with the TV to put it on the wall if needed.
Paul Szmal: Right. Right. Let's see. The TV is valued at what?
Pete: About $1,400?
Paul Szmal: Mm-hmm. Wow. Just the TV alone. Yeah. And then the total package, the value is almost $2,300.
Pete: Yes, sir. Yeah. And that's being given away and that will be a register to win on our website, which is fingerlakesdailynews.com. On the contest page, you can look for the entry when that goes live. Believe it's this Friday.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. I believe it's this Friday that drops. And then we'll draw it a few days before Christmas. I believe that's correct.
Pete: Yeah, to give you time if you want to get to the store and pick up your items and have them for the Christmas holiday itself.
Paul Szmal: Speaking of the holiday, what are the holiday hours that are going to be in effect? I'm sure you're going to expand the shopping hours here during the holiday season.
Pete: We're going to play with it again this year. Okay. We've played with it a couple times. We're going to try a couple things different. We're going to stay open until 7 starting Black Friday. We'll stay open until 7. So we'll be 10 to 7 and then we're also going to open on Sunday. We're going to be open 11 to 6 on Sunday for four Sundays for the holiday season. And again, it's 40% off the entire store during that time period.
Paul Szmal: During Black Friday weekend. That's just the Black Friday sale.
Pete: Yes. Okay. And then we get into the 25 deals at Christmas.
Paul Szmal: Correct. And then we get into other sales that we'll have throughout the month. We've already got it all planned out.
Pete: Wow. So this is going to be big.
Paul Szmal: I hope so. I hope so. I really hope that consumers and the community absolutely love it.
Pete: All right. We've got a lot of things planned.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. Go check it out. And of course, LC New York is in the Kingdom Plaza, as we call it, in Waterloo at the intersection of 5 and 20 and 414. Same Plaza that Topps is in.
Pete: Correct. That's an easy find. It's just a little ways down the plaza from Topps. You'll see the sign out front that says LC New York.
Paul Szmal: So happy Thanksgiving, Pete.
Pete: Happy Thanksgiving. Yeah. I hope hopefully everything is successful for the sales and people get some great deals and somebody is going to win some big prizes.
Paul Szmal: I hope so. Yeah. Absolutely.
It is 7.58 now on FLX Morning.
